Chapter 2: Out There

Quasi leans on the balustrade of Notre Dame looking longingly at the Feast of Fools down below.

Quasimodo: *spots a small bird* Mmm, lunch!

Bird: squeak!

Quasi: Good morning, will today be the day? Are you ready to get eaten? Good day to try, boy if I picked a day to be lunch this would be it.

Bird: *flies away as fast as possible to join other tasty birds*

Hugo: Aww yeah, that was a tasty bird. So what's going on out there, a fight? A flogging? A hot gypsy dancing? I think I see a hot gypsy!

Victor: The Festival of Fools!

Hugo: Boy, nothing like balcony seats for watching the old F.O.F.

Quasi: Yeah, watching…boy do I wish I could dance like that gypsy girl. I would make soo much money.

Silence.

Victor: Why don't you go there and fulfill your dream of dancing for coins, instead of just jealously watching?

Quasi: Sure! But I don't fit in down there…I am…hunched…. Besides, you're forgetting one thing…

Gargoyles: What?!

Quasi: I don't have a dress for my dance!

Laverne: Aww, come on, Quasi, just grab a fresh tunic and a clean pair of ho's.

Quasi: You mean hose, as in, pants?

Laverne: No.

Frollo: Good morning, Bellboy. Whomever are you talking to?

Quasi: Good morning, master. My friends. They are imaginary because I have no real friends.

Frollo: LUNCH. Shall we review your alphabet today?

Quasi: *gets out the fine china and wine glasses*

Frollo: A?

Quasi: Abstinence

Frollo: T?

Quasi: Blasph- what?

Frollo: C?

Quasi: C-c-contrition!

Frollo: D

Quasi: Dancing-

Frollo: Excuse me? Dancing? You are thinking about dancing at the festival?

Quasi: I meant...uh… Daddy-I-Love-You!

Frollo: The world is cruel, the world is wicked, It's I alone whom you can trust in this whole city, I am your only friend.

Quasi: Can we exchange friendship bracelets?!

Frollo: I who teach you, occasionally feed you, dress you. I who look upon you with much fear, how can I protect you, hunch, unless you always stay in here? You are Ugly.

Quasi: Thank you.

Frollo: You are deformed-

Quasi: I am deformed.

Frollo: And these are crimes that would get you landed in prison if people saw your face. Out there they'll revile you as a monster.

Quasi: You do in here also.

Frollo: Why invite their calumny and consternation?

Quasi: *flips through dictionary*

Frollo: *picks up the Quasi doll on the play set and sets it in the bell tower, and casually pushes the Frollo doll and Esmeralda doll close together* Stay in here.

Quasi: Okay.

Frollo: No, seriously, if I come back tonight and that Quasi doll is out of that doll-house you are dead meat.

Quasi: What?

Frollo: Don't move that Quasi doll.

Quasi: You're right master, I should stay in here, and just like that Quasi doll is a metaphor for you not wanting me to leave the belltower, I will not.

Frollo: Oh what? No you can go outside . I was actually singing all that to the Quasi doll. If that doll is out of its mini-Notre-Dame when I get back there will be trouble.*whispers to doll* Remember, this is your sanctuary…

Quasi: Safe behind these windows and these parapets of stone, spying on the people down below me. Every day I watch them as I hide up here alone, carving them into dolls and pretending I have friends.

*creepy smile*

All my life I've memorized their faces, knowing them as they will never know me.

*another creepy smile*

All my life I've wondered how it'd feel to pass a day not above them, but uncomfortably close to them….

And out there, where they all live unaware…that I watch them. What I'd give, what I'd dare.

Out there among the gypsies and the bakers and their breads, through the bells and pigeons I can see them, every day he bakes and kneads and complains about his muffins, heedless of the gift it is to be so close to those muffins…If I was in his skin-

*creepier smile*

-I'd treasure every instant. Out there, dancing at the Feast.

Give me one day out there, all I ask is one, to dance for the people, out there like ordinary men.

Won't resent, won't despair, old and bent as long as I'm not hunched, I won't care- I'll have spent one dance out thereeeeee!